1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an input device for a computer, more particularly to a dual-mode input device operable in a selected one of a relative coordinate mode and an absolute coordinate mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional pointing device, such as a mouse, is used to generate relative coordinate information that is provided to a computer to enable control of motion of a cursor on a display. Whether or not motion of the cursor from a current position to a target position is to be accelerated by the computer is determined from the relative coordinate information.
Since cursor acceleration and the computer operating system may affect motion of the cursor to the target position, the mouse may not be a suitable pointing device in applications that require precise control of the cursor position, such as in handwriting applications, drawing applications, etc. While a computer application program for converting mouse motion into absolute coordinate information has been proposed to alleviate the above drawback, the need to install the computer application program and to allocate computer system resources to execute the computer application program results in inconvenience.